Future of TV Briefing: The M&A match game (summer 2026 edition)

Remember the merger-mania period of the late 2010s? Disney-20th Century Fox. Discovery-Scripps. AT&T-Time Warner. Viacom-CBS. Televisa-Univision. Well, the mid-2020s are starting to feel like that. 

This year alone Paramount Skydance is closing in on Warner Bros. Discovery (maybe). Fox has agreed to acquire Roku. And Comcast has decided to spin out NBCUniversal. All of which raises the question: What other potential deals are on the table? 

In the spirit of summer being a time to sit back and prep for the fall and future, here is a wildly speculative rundown of three more mega-deals that may be in the offing, including cases for why they could and could not happen and the conditions under which they should happen.

Disclaimer: I won’t be getting into the regulatory challenges nor financial considerations of any of these deals because with this government and this economy, who the hell knows….

Netflix-NBCUniversal

Netflix has already shown it’s in the market for a traditional media company with its failed bid for WBD. And for as much as Comcast-NBCU execs have said that NBCU is “absolutely not” for sale post-split, c’mon. 

Case for: Netflix needs more live sports, and NBCU would bring NFL, NBA, WNBA, MLB, college football, PGA, Premier League and, oh yeah, Olympics rights. Meanwhile, NBCUniversal needs more streaming scale considering Peacock only has a 1.7% share of TV watch time, ranking 8th among streaming companies. Additionally, while NBCU could stick with FreeWheel’s ad tech stack post-split despite the latter seeming set to stay with Comcast, who knows what Comcast could do with it? And as Disney and Fox have established – let alone YouTube and Amazon – it can be beneficial for a streaming company to own its ad tech stack, and Netflix has been establishing its own with Netflix Ads Suite.

Case against: For as big of a deal as this would be, it may not necessarily address Netflix’s biggest vulnerability. Sure, it would give Netflix more high-quality, advertiser-friendly, subscriber-sticky programming. But how helpful would that be in catching up to YouTube, which has been running away with the TV watch-time race. Plus, Netflix didn’t want WBD’s traditional TV networks (aside from HBO).

The trigger: If YouTube succeeds in acquiring more rights to major live sports, Netflix will need to respond. Meanwhile – when excluding Versant, which was spun off from NBCU last year – NBCU is already ranked 7th among all distributors when it comes to TV watch time, which doesn’t look great on a pitch deck.

Walmart-The Trade Desk

Walmart’s acquisitions of Vizio and Vibe.co signal the Amazon rival is looking to copy its nemesis’s CTV advertising playbook. And The Trade Desk could use all the help it can get.

Case for: Walmart’s ad tech business is ascendant, but it’s missing a major piece that Amazon and Google each have: a demand-side platform. Meanwhile, TTD has been under fire for more than a year, and its biggest vulnerability has been its relative dearth of proprietary data. With TTD, Walmart would get its hands on the primary rival to Amazon’s and Google’s buy-side technology. And with Walmart, TTD would get the kind of backing that have quieted criticisms of Amazon’s and Google’s less-than-transparency ad tech from becoming full-throated rejections.

Case against: Didn’t Walmart already have an exclusive deal with TTD only to decide it wasn’t sufficient and that it needed to bring on – checking notes – Google’s DSP? Yup. And wouldn’t being owned by Walmart make one of TTD’s primary selling points – its independence – null and void? Uh-huh. 

The trigger: TTD’s stock price has already fallen by more than 80% since February 2025, including by nearly 50% this year alone. If that slide continues, something will have to give. And the more TTD’s stock price goes down, the less Walmart would have to give to scoop it up.

Beast Industries-Mattel

The creator economy is itching for a major deal. It’s been a decade since Maker Studios sold to Disney, Fullscreen sold to AT&T and Machinima sold to Warner Bros. Sure, there have been a bevy of deals for influencer marketing firms. But the creator economy is finally being embraced by Hollywood (minus the members with Emmy ballots). It’s time for a deal that crosses the rubicon.

Case for: Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson has built a company worth $5 billion based largely on his expertise in producing entertainment that a half-billion people tune into. He’s parlayed that into traditional TV (streaming, but streaming is TV) as well as physical products like candy, snacks and toys. In other words, he has established a highly successful IP flywheel. Mattel, meanwhile, has a ton of IP and has been trying to do the same but in the opposite direction under Ynon Kreiz, the former Endemol executive who spearheaded the toy maker’s push into entertainment with “Barbie” and had overseen Maker Studios through its sale to Disney. 

Case against: Beast Industries is in the toy business, but not like Mattel is in the toy business. The former does licensing deals for other companies to make its toys, whereas the latter’s primary business is making toys, many of which are manufactured in China. So Beast Industries wouldn’t be taking on just IP but also a legacy business that’s beyond the scope of its current operation.

The trigger: Mattel’s market cap has shrunk by roughly a third this year, bringing the company’s valuation lower than Beast Industries. And although Beast Industries remains on an upswing, its business remains primarily oriented around Donaldson. So while Beast Industries CEO Jeff Housenbold likens Donaldson to Walt Disney, eventually Disney needed to diversify beyond Mickey Mouse – an evolution that seems extremely top of mind for Housenbold.

What we’ve heard

“That level of automation for content, it works, but it often will drive content to being unimaginative.”

— PMG’s Jennifer Quigley-Jones on AI agent use in influencer marketing

Numbers to know

22: Number of people of color who received an Emmy nomination this year, the lowest count since 2015.

46%: Percentage share of people who said they’ve missed a game because they didn’t know where it was streaming.

25%: Percentage share of AI assistant responses that cite YouTube creators’ videos.

25%: Percentage share of marketing professionals who said they use AI for influencer marketing work.

What we’ve covered

Inside the newsroom push to turn print reporters into video talent:

• Some publications are building formal “talent labs” with structured coaching and workflows.
• Others are taking a looser approach, simply putting more journalists in front of a camera and iterating from there.

Read more about newsrooms’ video talent here.

How streaming World Cup creators built a new broadcast blueprint:

• Creator-led streams have helped FIFA reach younger, global audiences that traditional sports coverage has struggled to reach.
• Darren “IShowSpeed” Watkins Jr.’s sideline World Cup livestreams (in which he records himself reacting to the game, rather than the field) have gotten tens of millions of views each on both Twitch and YouTube across the world.

Read more about creators’ World Cup coverage here.

How Unilever uses AI to manage its growing creator network:

• Unilever is comfortable handing over administrative tasks and paperwork to automated tools.
• One tool allows Unilever brands to scan videos on social media and find people who share positive stories about its products to potentially use for its creator marketing efforts.

Read more about AI in creator marketing here.

Advertisers look for upside in Sky’s ITV deal:

• Two of the U.K.’s biggest broadcast players will operate under the same umbrella with a combined business spanning 40 million viewers a month on subscription TV, multiple streaming services, and free-to-air broadcast.
• Whether ITVX and Sky parent Comcast’s own streaming services might end up merged, or how the combined companies might meld their ad sales teams, technology and behind-the-scenes infrastructure, has so far been left unsaid by the executives behind the deal.

Read more about the Sky-ITV deal here.

What we’re reading

States’ bid to block Paramount-WBD:

California and 11 other states have sued to block Paramount Skydance’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery over antitrust concerns, according to CNBC.

Netflix’s live TV play:

Declining subscriber engagement is spurring Netflix to explore adding live channels and subscription bundles, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Disney+’s free tier play:

The House of Mouse is considering adding a free, ad-supported tier to Disney+ to better compete with YouTube and Tubi according to Business Insider.

IAB’s digital video dictionary:

The trade organization has developed a framework for defining digital video viewing experiences and signals, according to AdExchanger.